"Stop Palestinian Leaders From Teaching Hate & Violence - Say Yes to Peace," read the text-only advertisements currently found in several BART stations in San Francisco. The ads purport to advocate "peace" between Israelis and Palestinians, but attacking those with whom one claims to want peace is an odd way of doing so. The ads are just wrong on many levels.

Of course, the ads are not really about promoting peace. They are a tool to denigrate the Palestinian people in the eyes of U.S. citizens, to paint all Palestinians with a broad brush as anti-semitic terrorists. If low-information voters see these ads, they might buy into the myth, or have it reinforced for them, that Israelis are currently suffering at the hands of Palestinian terrorists, unaware of Israel's ongoing campaign of racist ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories. As long as Palestinians are all seen as evil, or less than human, Israel can continue with its colonial expansion unabated, subsidized by American taxpayers. There will be no pressure from the U.S. for a real peace.

While the ads promote a supporting website in large print, smaller type reveals the advertisements to have been paid for by a Los Angeles-based pro-Israeli lobby called Stand With Us. In a disingenuous attempt to portray the ads as a fair-minded plea for peace, the Say Yes to Peace website's About Us page, as it acknowledes that the ads are a project of Stand With Us, omits a key line from the Stand With Us website's mission statement: "we strive to ensure that Israel's side of the story is told." The group is called Stand With Us (implying "not them") after all. The misinformation on both websites is too much to detail here, but it is especially galling that the Say Yes to Peace site completely ignores the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land and declares that "Israel has recognized Palestinian nationalism. Now the Palestinians must also accept Jewish nationalism."

It's obvious that its the actions of Zionist colonists in Palestine that have, for almost a century, been teaching Palestinians, as well as Lebanese and other people in the regions, that Jews are their oppressors. To stop this, people of Jewish ethnicity need to be more outspoken and active in opposing these criminals who dare to act in the name of 'The Jewish People.'

But what is even more important than the above is that Zionist propagandists, including those who dominate Hollywood, have been teaching vicious hatred of Arabs to people throughout the Western world, especially the United States, for generations. Without such propaganda as preparation, it would have been impossible for any section of the U.S. ruling class to carry out the murderous military and economic assaults on the people of Iraq over the last 21 years that have cost a couple of million Iraqi lives and many tens of millions of person-years of extreme hardship.

Why does the antisemitic racism of the first comment get ignored? The labeling of -- who exactly? Jews? Zionists? Israelis? -- as "jackbooted troglodytes" isn't racist? Spewing such hate isn't meant to demonize anyone even remotely associated with the policies of any and all zionists? Collective responsibility/guilt is the game of racists and bigots. Surely you can come up with some way to discuss/condemn the historically oppressive antics of the Israeli ruling class without resorting to vile and dehumanizing caricatures?